A Mom & Daughter Adventure in Malaysia...

This past week our family was all over the place in Asia. Our school LASA (Love All Serve All) service trips took place, and Brian flew to the Philippines with a group of staff and students to build houses with Habitat for Humanity. Rebecca and Hannah flew off to India to visit the Beulah Home Orphanage (a place that has a very special place in my heart and Brian's heart). I had an IB conference to attend during the first weekend of the break in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, so Cora came along and we spent our winter break frolicking and having fun. While in Kuala Lumpur (or KL, as it is more commonly called) we spent our evenings exploring the city and admiring the famous Petronas twin towers. In fact, from our hotel pool (and room) we had a lovely view of the towers. We spent a few hours visiting the National Mosque and chatting with a Canadian woman who is volunteering there, and spent one evening at the large and fascinating Bird Park (where Cora was able to feed a rhinoceros hornbill some fruit right out of her hand). One afternoon Cora joined our scholarly group of TOK (Theory of Knowledge) teachers to visit the KL art gallery and, of course, we managed to fit in a bit of shopping during the weekend, too! :)

Exploring Penang...

After our weekend in Kuala Lumpur, Cora and I jumped on a bus and traveled five hours to the island of Penang. We stayed at a quiet little hotel on a nice stretch of beach and enjoyed hunting for beautiful shells, swimming in the pool and exploring the island. There was a beautiful butterfly and insect farm at one end of the island where we spent an entire afternoon (in one photo here you can see Cora leaning towards a plant - a big part of that plant is a large insect shaped like leaves!), and the big beach resort stretch of Batu Ferringhi provided a lovely evening of entertainment (which even included a double para-sailing adventure - very fun!). The city of Georgetown on the island boasts a big Chinatown section and Little India, as well as a lot of gorgeous colonial architecture from the early 1800s when England established a trading colony here. On one street in Georgetown there is a Christian church, a Chinese Buddhist temple, an Islamic mosque and a Hindu temple side by side (I think there is a valuable lesson to be learned about tolerance and peace from these islanders). Our five days here were fabulous.

B'Ball Stars!

Basketball season wrapped up for Hannah this week with a home game victory over Korea International School. Rebecca's varsity team also beat KIS the same night, and then went on to play on Friday at Saturday in Seoul to wrap up their season with the big KAIAC tournament. Our TCIS girls placed sixth in the tournament and Rebecca got an all-conference KAIAC award. This means she is the most valuable player for her team for the whole season, which is a wonderful honour (the photo where she is wearing a medallion features the MVP players for all of the KAIAC teams). She played well and Brian even captured a nice 3-point shot on video (below). On Wednesday she is off to Shanghai for the Asia-Pacific Athletic Conference tournament!